So, here's the scoop; about a month ago, suffering from jumper's knee, shin splints and general malaise, I decided to give an honest go at the PM Mass program. I crunched the numbers, used the awesome spread-sheet, and made it through 2 workouts before I found out that we'd be auditioning for a commercial in LA for which I'd have to be at my peak Parkour-wise...so, the mass-gain workout got put back on the shelf and I again checked out a copy of "The Numerous Aches and Pains You Get from Jumping Off of Things...Vol.1"

I made a good program, very similar to the 5 day split in "Infinite Intensity" with a two-a-day shift for skill work. It worked great, and I felt awesome (with enough fish oil/ibuprofen!) I traveled to LA, went to the audition...and snapped my 5th metatarsal on a bad landing (from 3 feet...ugh) during the first 5 minutes of the warm-up. Needless to say, the UCLA emergency room, while uhhhh....nice...isn't exactly where I wanted to spend my time in LA.

So, now I have one foot, the other is getting ready to be cut open and augmented with titanium. I've decided that I want to work up to some pretty beastly levels of strength and skill in the movements I can still do, namely pull-ups, handstand push-ups and ring-work. I can obviously still do pistols, though my one good leg is getting worn out enough as it is, and I really don't want to overbuild one side of my hips to the detriment of my back...so I'm laying off of any specific work there.

That being said, I do still want to put on a bit of weight, though for no real practical reason (outside of my latent psychological imbalance from growing up a skinny kid!) Hell, I'm talking about learning free-standing handstand push-ups and one-arm pull-ups in one sentence, then mentioning being heavier in another...you're right, I have no focus, but that's another issue. My question is this: what kind of progress can I expect along the mass-gain lines with almost purely upper-body movements? As much as I ask from the training aspect (as this is the training section of the forum) I'm also interested from the nutrition side, as I would like to put on muscle in balance with the stimulus (i.e. more muscle for pull-ups/dips/handstands) rather than gaining excess fat because the stimulus isn't broad enough to elicit any appreciable neuroendrocrine or physical response.

If anybody has any experience along these lines, info would be appreciated, as I have a good number of people who've asked me how to gain weight, and my answer always involved squats and deadlifts!